The invention relates to a method and a system for tracking product data, for example quality data, brand information, production machine identification, production time, in a transport storage section of the tobacco-processing industry.
DE 102 16 069 A1 discloses a method and an apparatus for tracking product data for individual products in a machine in the tobacco-processing industry which operates with a certain machine cycle, i.e. processes a certain number of individual products per minute. The assignment of the product data to the individual products is based in this case on precise knowledge of the machine cycle and the length of path covered by the product in the machine. This method cannot be transferred to a product mass flow having numerous unordered individual products such as, for example, in a transport section between a cigarette production machine and a packing machine, since here the assignment of the product data to the individual products gets lost. This problem is aggravated when the length of path in the transport storage section is variable as is the case, for example, when a variable cigarette store is used.